EVENT SCHEDULE

Urbanism Next Conference 2019

Conference organizers are applying for continuing education credits for the American Institute of Certified Planners (CMs) and the American Institute of Architects (LU/HSWs). The American Society of Landscape Architects members are eligible to self-report (LA CES) hours per the requirements of their state licensure boards.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

8:00 am | Registration | White Stag Building

9:00 am - 4:00 pm | Full-Day Workshop

+ Urbanism Next for Elected Officials and Government Leaders – How new mobility, autonomous vehicles, e-commerce and the sharing economy impact cities

The way people get around their communities, shop for clothes, order delivery, or even look for places to stay when traveling is radically different from how people did those things a decade ago. Rapid technological advances in the areas of automation, new mobility, e-commerce, and the sharing economy are behind these behavioral shifts, and there’s no indication that the stream of innovations around these technologies is going to dry up anytime soon. If anything, things are just getting started, and what comes next could not only change transport choices or shopping habits, but fundamentally change urban landscapes forever. This all-day workshop is designed to help decision makers understand how new mobility, autonomous vehicles, e-commerce, and the sharing economy impact land use, transportation, urban design, and real estate. Government leaders need to understand the challenges and opportunities that these technologies could bring so they can harness them to achieve community goals around equity, health, the economy, and the environment. This workshop will help decision makers understand the issues surrounding emerging technology, the questions they need to ask, the stakeholders that need to engage, and the next steps they need to take to make sure their organizations are well prepared for the changes ahead.

Nico Larco, Professor and Urbanism Next Director, University of Oregon

9:00 am - 12:00 pm | Concurrent Half-Day Workshops

Emerging mobility technologies, from autonomous vehicles and rapid transit to rideshare and dock-free devices, are changing the urban landscape. A group of design and planning leaders from ASLA's New Mobility and Emerging Technologies Subcommittee will host a workshop that looks beyond technological boosterism to the impacts and opportunities of these innovations for the built environment. The workshop will begin with a high-level overview of the potential risks and rewards of new mobility technologies. This introduction will be followed by a charrette in which breakout groups apply emerging mobility technologies to a range of prototypical settings. Sample locations from Portland could include the creative mixed-use Pearl District, the Alaska Street commercial strip, and the rapidly transforming Lloyd District. Teams will examine the relationship between new technologies and existing transportation in these places, as well as their influence on land use and public space. Teams will imagine alternative futures that harness technology in support of more humane, sustainable, and equitable communities.

+ Beyond Streets to Intersections & Districts: Hacking the Design of the Multi-modal Street in the Autonomous Future

How can streets be better designed to support emerging and disruptive transportation and logistics? Can these designs be extended to intersections, corridors and districts that support livability and sustainability? During past years, academics and planners have worked to understand how automated vehicles can be integrated onto city streets, and to develop design and policy scenarios to propose aspirational streets of the future. Structured as an interactive workshop, this session will begin with a presentation on the design and policy landscape followed by a dialogue between academics, practicing planners and private sector innovators. Throughout the presentation, participants will be asked to answer questions via an interactive poll that will be used to highlight strengths and weaknesses of future visions as well as hopes and fears of participants. Following this, participants will work in groups to produce design and related policy concepts for intersections and districts. This will be done using a handful of interactive online tools and with the Urbanism Next Rethinking the Street vision as the primary street prototype. Upon extending this prototype, participant groups will list and develop potential designs, policies, financial strategies and near-term actions that can be implemented to achieve these visions. The workshop will conclude with a group discussion led by panelists responding to the ideas and workshop participants reacting to both the presented ideas and the panelists' responses.

Many cities have established that shifting general purpose lanes to transit priority or transit dedicated lanes is crucial to moving people efficiently. However logical, the optics of removing a lane for automobiles is at best, a slow and technically challenging process and at worst, a toxic political no-go. This workshop will uncover common themes and creative ways to overcome serious challenges through a range of case stories: success stories and struggling projects. We will also explore how this dynamic will shift with autonomous-only lanes and debate the pros and cons of shared stops and lane space for public and private providers.

+ Physical and Virtual Aspects of the Mobility Hub - Landing them here and now in a shifting landscape

Mobility hubs are places where multimodal mobility services converge in a public space that is designed to facilitate convenient, safe and accessible transfer between modes, transforming today's transit stations into dynamic hubs of community interaction and opportunities. More than just a place to make a transfer, mobility hubs will aggregate the multitudinous mobility modes and technologies into a single physical and digital environment. In this half day workshop, come join experts and collaborate to design adaptable, flexible and future-proof facilities including the details of policy, design and implementation alongside peers and agency partners. We will test mobility hub concepts at real sites with TriMet, Sound Transit and King County Metro, exploring both retrofit scenarios on legacy systems. Teams will layout the physical space requirements for various mobility services, and learn about the digital and virtual tools with physical implications like geo-fencing.

1:30 pm - 4:30 pm | Concurrent Half-Day Workshops

With the continuing rise of on-line shopping, at the expense of bricks and mortar stores, the US is experiencing the highest rate of mall and retail closures on record. People are still buying merchandise, so how is it getting to our door step and what does our "door step" need to become to receive all of this merchandise? How are our curbs, lobbies and porches coping with this? Are our streets to be forever blocked by double-parked delivery trucks? Are we going to need to share sidewalks with autonomous delivery Sherpas? How will we accommodate a delivery drone air force? And what happens to our former retail hubs and the local and state sales taxes that they generate? Participate in a workshop that will examine neighborhood delivery & pick-up, re-purposing of regional retail malls, impacts on multi-unit housing lobbies and mailrooms as they adapt to this changing retail paradigm.

+ Land Valuation Impacts of AVs

Fast, fun and collaborative - what will be the AV impacts on land valuation and site development potential? We've updated the 2018 workshop to be even more real-time and multi-regional. You bring the knowledge and assumptions about the value of land in an AV future and we'll test your scenarios in two metro areas currently guided by different land use and transportation policy approaches. The group process will include more targeted discussion and a greater number of modeled outcomes for comparison. The results will be analyzed in near real-time, so come see your ideas put into action!

+ Micromobility and Transit Service Delivery Opportunities in the Underserved Edges

For residents living in the lower-density edges of urban areas, the lack of frequent and reliable mobility creates a barrier to economic opportunity and freedom of choice. Lower-income residents are locating in cities' edges where housing is more affordable, but transportation options are limited. Non-standard work and lifestyle schedules place more challenges on lower income residents whose travel needs do not match the orientation of fixed route transit for rush hour trips to downtown. This session will consider ways to meet the needs of these areas more effectively though emerging mobility services, innovative technologies, and new institutional arrangements. This session will appraise ways that agencies are providing disadvantaged users access to dockless vehicles, trip planning, payment platforms, and multimodal network integration. Panelists will explore the efficacy of these efforts, if they are in the right direction, and if there is more we could be doing to create more equitable outcomes.

Lightning Talks

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

8:00 - 9:00 am | Registration | Oregon Convention Center

9:00 am | Welcome

9:30 - 11:45 am | Plenary Speakers

11:45 am | Lunch

12:15 pm | Lunch Speaker

1:15 pm | Session 1 | Concurrent Panels

+ A Collaborative Strategy for Frictionless Regional Mobility

Public transportation agencies are currently challenged on a frontier to redefine themselves and define a new future for frictionless mobility beyond boundaries.Private-public partnerships are more critical than ever. Government needs to pause, reevaluate, and shift in response to the future of regional immobility. See what TriMet and local partners are doing to leverage technology, data and policy in this new space to create a truly Smart City with a MaaS platform.

+ Smart Cities for the Rest of Us: The Implications of New Transportation Technologies for Those Left Out of the Urban Revolution

This session examines how the conversation about new mobility platforms may be different for smaller cities and rural communities, and in places where growth, investment, and the political will for necessary regulation is not assured. Speakers will identify specific policy and planning strategies to ensure new transportation technologies work for communities that may currently be left out of the conversation.

+ The Ama-zoning of America Continues: It's a Matter of TIME

At some point in the near-future, everything that consumers can purchase in stores will be available online for the same price or approximately the same price. That will leave only one battleground left for which "e-tailers" like Amazon and Walmart will compete - the TIME between ordering goods and when the goods are delivered. The resulting impacts will be felt by commercial and warehouse/industrial zones, along the transportation network and within residential neighborhoods (including the curb), and the design, regulatory, and development implications could be profound.

+ Bringing the Curb Back: How Cities are Innovating in 20ft

In today's rapidly evolving mobility marketplace, there is nothing more precious than urban curb space. People have more mobility options than ever before, and as a result, the design of our streets, cities and physical infrastructure is changing dramatically. At a time when cities across the globe are working to prioritize, preserve and protect the public right-of-way, hear from four cities on how they are harnessing technology to innovate on their streets. Hear about the public-private partnerships that are enabling rapid transformation and adaptation.

Sabrina Sussman, Manager of Public Partnerships, ZipcarAlex Keating, Director of Special Projects, New York City Department of TransportationAlex Pazuchanics, Assistant Director, Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, City of PittsburghMari Hunter Principal Planner, San Francisco Municipal Transportation AuthorityEvian Patterson, Associate Director, Parking and Ground Transportation Division, District Department of Transportation

+ What digital and Policy Infrastructure Do Cities Need to Shape the Impact of New Transportation Technology?

Cities and governments are faced with the need to manage the interaction of emerging and future transportation modes with existing private and public transportation. The impacts on congestion, the environment, and social equity of TNCs, scooters, and autonomous vehicles are not fully understood. Yet, as these technologies may mature and reach scale quickly, stakeholders are looking for policies and technological solutions that will help them achieve manageable outcomes and will adapt and scale as new modes grow. This panel will explore a range of policy frameworks that could govern tradeoffs between transportation modes and help cities accomplish social goals through pricing and other incentives.

2:45 pm | Break

3:00 | Session 2 | Concurrent Panels

+ Big Ideas for the Heart of Seattle

Seattle is developing a framework plan that defines a shared urban design and mobility vision for the heart of Seattle. This 2035 vision identifies opportunities for public spaces and transportation improvements that will serve Seattle's core neighborhoods as they continue to densify. This planning effort is a collaboration between six planning and transportation agencies to support sustainable transportation, strengthen healthy communities, and provide equitable access to mobility choices.

+ Valuing and Managing the Public Right Of Way

Curbside management, congestion pricing, and per-mile fees are being mentioned as tools to improve traffic flow, fund infrastructure, and provide reliability and certainty for all road users. Yet for all the discussion, few governments have been willing to take the leap. Panelists will discuss how governments are approaching these big changes in policy and bringing them across the finish line, along with the stumbling blocks and surprises along the way.

+ Micro-mobility: What is it, and How Can the Public and Private Sectors Work Together to Acheieve Environmenal, Equity, and Other Policy Goals?

Over the past year and a half, the micro-mobility revolution has transformed how many people get around cities. This panel session features experts from across different sectors, who have each in their own way sought to better understand or positively shape the impacts of this rapidly-growing transportation technology.

+ TOD to Regenerative City

In Smart City Kashiwa-no-ha, the collection and analysis of real-time occupant data has shaped the local economy to better meet the needs of residents. By gathering data, local businesses and city infrastructure are tailored to community lifestyles, such as additional childcare in neighborhoods with more families. The cyclical economy allows residents to go car-free by reducing the need to leave their neighborhoods to seek out services. Kashiwa-no-ha demonstrates what’s possible if North American cities are willing to adapt to emerging technology and work across platforms to translate data into shared benefits.

+ The Augmented City

Augmented reality (AR) in the public realm has the ability to offer customized experiences for how individuals see and navigate their environment, yet raises questions in regards to the impact on our overall health and well-being. This session will focus on the potential for a user to customize their experience of the built environment beyond wayfinding, and highlight the potential burdens, such as advertisements, placed on underrepresented and underserved populations. By highlighting the equity-based burdens, communities can take a proactive approach to ensuring that policy and design regulations result in outcomes that only work to advance opportunities for all.

Reception

Thursday, May 9, 2019

7:30 - 8:00 am | Registration | Oregon Convention Center

8:00 am | Welcome

8:15 am | Plenary Speaker

8:45 am | Break

9:00 am | Session 3 | Concurrent Panels

+ Growing Relationships Between Public Transit and TNCs Transportation

A few cities have begun active partnerships with TNCs to complement or substitute public transit, and we explore these partnerships and their impacts further in this workshop by discussing ongoing pilot studies and research.

+ What About The Workers? Ridehailing, Micromobility, and Our Fair City

Micromobility and ridehailing can make transportation systems healthier and more equitable by reducing car ownership and storage. However, many of these services use gig workers—contingent workers who access work via app—to manage their fleet. There have been significant labor and health issues associated with gig work in the ridehailing industry. This panel discussion will examine the role of gig work in this new transportation system.

Molly Tran, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Colorado School of Public HealthBrian Kyuhoon No, Head of Public Policy, Spin

+ Preparing for Emerging Technologies in the Pacific Northwest

Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) have both undertaken efforts to prepare for emerging technologies. Come learn more about how the Pacific Northwest is rising to meet the challenge of integrating new technologies onto our roads, while ensuring that they advance our transportation goals.

Emergent technologies such as connected and autonomous trucks are impacting and will impact even more supply chains and the spatial distribution of economic activities. All layers of supply chains--from global to urban--are affected by new technologies, influencing the geographic distribution of economic activities and land use, and posing new challenges for transportation and city planning. In this session land use and transportation planners will discuss how emergent technologies are impacting land-use and the best ways to foster freight-efficient land-uses.

+ Deployment of Automated Vehicles in Metropolitan Areas: A European Perspective

Automated vehicles (AVs) currently pilot only on fragments of urban road networks due to safety standards, technological feasibility and spatial complexity. This condition could potentially last for decades, leading to spatially (and socially) selective deployment of AVs across metropolitan areas. In this session, the Technical University of Vienna, TNO and Graz Holding present latest research on spatial challenges and impacts of AVs as well as respective implication for planning and policy.

+ “I’m All For Progress, It’s Change I Don’t Like” - Pushing Past the Bias to Keep the Curb the Way It Is

Policies around the curb space are usually contested, with a valley present between the desire to adapt to evolving transportation technologies and uses and a bias for the status quo. As such, reassigning (or often even considering) it can be fraught for jurisdictions, in part because of the competing demands, which can be viewed as zero-sum. Fehr & Peers and Uber, who have worked together on two curb studies, will host this time to catalog perspectives and best approaches with respect to the curb. We’ve Invited representatives from several US cities to discuss how they make decisions around curbspace and what the future may hold.

10:30 am | Break

10:45 am | Session 4 | Concurrent Events

+ Ideation to Implementation: Putting Emerging Technologies to the Test in Columbus, Los Angeles, and Seattle

Ready or not, the future of transportation has arrived in regions across the country. In this session, we will explore efforts in three diverse metropolitan areas to align new mobility solutions with long-range transportation planning goals. Hear from transportation planners about pilot projects being deployed within urban and suburban landscapes to harness technology solutions to increase walking, biking and transit-use

+ Cross Sector Approaches to Equity

New technologies offer an opportunity to combat present inequities in transportation and our cities. But they could also exacerbate inequities and leave some groups even further behind. Achieving equitable outcomes requires intentional planning and service delivery and will likely require coordination across public, private, and non-profit sectors. In this session, representatives from the public, private, and non-profit sectors will present strategies and actions they have already taken to pursue equitable outcomes, the successes they have achieved, and the challenges they have encountered.

+ Data is a Girl's (and City's) Best Friend

Automated vehicles are estimated to produce mountains of data- approximately 40 GBit per second (Lucid Motors). A fully connected, automated, and integrated mobility future will also include other data-generating devices and services, some of which are on the road today- from GPS located e-scooters, to app-enabled transportation network companies, to individual smart phones tracking our locations and trips in real time. New sources of data create new opportunities for cities to understand, plan for, deliver, and monitor mobility services. This session will explore how data is being leveraged today and in a connected/automated future to drive mobility outcomes.

+ Senior Housing in the Age of the Sharing Economy, Artificial Intelligence and AVs

This panel discussion will explore how technology is impacting senior housing design through enhanced user experiences. Panelists from diverse industries including architecture, technology, design, placemaking, and economics will discuss the different ways this technology is changing the senior housing industry and its role in cities and communities.

+ Right Sizing Parking: New Approaches for Placemaking

While policymakers refer to technology's potential for reducing parking, designing actual projects requires a pivot from code dictates to new approaches that embrace uncertainty and the parking demand ecosystem. This session takes a closer look at actual projects and business models to reduce and reallocate space for parking.

The session will explore how the discussion around AV adaptation revolves around large urban metropolises to the detriment of an in-depth examination of the possible secondary impacts of AV adaptation for mid-size metropolitan areas. The Baton Rouge metropolitan area – the nation's 70th largest metro – is a prototypical mid-size metro and offers important insights to the challenges mid-size metros may face as AVs come online, as well as how related challenges are being identified and mitigated in a community lacking the resources of a large metro.

12:15 pm | Lunch

12:45 pm | Lunch Speaker

1:30 pm | Break

1:45 pm | Session 5 | Concurrent Panels

+ City and TNC Collaboration - A Case Study

In 2018, the City of Monrovia, located in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, CA [population of 37,000], invited Lyft, a TNC, and Lime, a micro-mobility provider, to collaborate with them in providing convenient and easy access to Monrovia's LA Metro Gold Line light-rail station, under the banner of GoMonrovia. Listen to the key players discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by this innovative public-private partnership.

+ What Will It Take to Ensure Equity in a Transit/AV Future?

It is said that TNCs are just AVs with a driver. Compared with taxis, TNCs are closing the equity gap, but their direct competition with transit in some markets makes it unclear whether they are creating a more equitable transportation system overall. Using findings from the Cincinnati Mobility Lab, Union of Concerned Scientists self-driving cars study, and TransitCenter research, this session will explore how the rapid growth of TNCs is affecting the equity of the transportation system as a whole and the implications this has for an AV future.

+ Preemption, Privacy, and People: Laying the Legal and Policy Foundations to Support Long-term Success of Transportation Technologies

This session will focus on three new considerations that innovation brings with it: 1) how to preserve local control in consideration of our diverse national transportation system while balancing the promotion of innovation; 2) analyzing privacy in an era where "smart" technologies are being deployed on public assets and collecting citizen data; and, 3) considering what outreach and education should be done to citizens around the deployment of new technologies to not only promote use and adoption, but to also ensure consumer trust with the increased collection of data through public-private partnerships.

Gregory Rodriguez, Attorney, Best Best & KriegerJan Whittington, Associate Professor, University of Washington
John Kennedy, Deputy City Attorney, San Francisco City Attorney’s Office

+ Zoning in the Era of On-Demand Land Use

Since the birth of zoning and the Euclid decision, urban planners and real estate professionals have based their regulatory and investment decisions on rigid, single-definition land use categories that can be plotted on a map. But in an era where anyone can change their house into a hotel or an office space at the click of a button, cities have struggled to regulate dynamic markets when it conflicts with static land use regulations. Focusing on the short-term rental market, this session looks at how city governments have used zoning tools to shape the industry, alter housing, building code, and discrimination regulation, and ensure compliance.

+ Piloting Dockless Devices in a Changing Mobility Landscape

The City of Santa Monica, a community that has long encouraged sustainable and people-oriented transportation options, was the initial trial grounds for shared electric scooters. In this session, learn how the city responded to the proliferation of dockless devices on its public right of way through its Shared Mobility Pilot program and integration of the new Mobility Data Specifications tool. Plus, hear a discussion about ideas for building more collaborative relationships between the public and private sectors.

3:15 pm | Break

3:30 pm | Session 6 | Concurrent Panels

Do transit and transportation network companies compete or collaborate? It's not as simple as that. As new mobility service providers emerge, some see a competitive threat to transit, while other agencies have partnered with them. Throughout 2018, Terra Curtis and Buffy Ellis led a national study of twenty partnerships to prepare the upcoming TCRP report: Partnerships between Transit Agencies and Transportation Network Companies. The outcome of this research is the Partnership Playbook, which synthesizes lessons learned and empowers the transit industry to be more proactive in its approach to working with TNCs.

+ Mobility for the 90 Percent

Access to opportunity is a critical determinant of quality of life. In recent decades, confounding issues around land use, transportation, and equity have coalesced in such a way that increasingly, accessibility depends on mobility. At the same time, discordant trends of global inequality and major technological advancements are on the rise. This session will explore the role of transportation innovation in filling the mobility gap for the world's 90 percent at the scale and pace needed to address the global challenges of today.

+ New Mobility and Municipal Budgets: Planning for the Future

Autonomous and electric vehicles have the potential to improve safety, provide mobility, increase road capacity and lower emissions. But autonomous and electric vehicles pose challenges for many facets of local government administration including revenue generation. Traditional sources of transportation funding like gasoline taxes and registration fees may decline as new modes of mobility are adopted. Research at the University of Oregon has focused on how transportation funding may be affected in Gresham and Eugene, and proposed innovative funding options for filling the gap in funding.

+ The Zone of Exchange

From ground to garage, the Zone of Exchange is where people interact with buildings and where urban life occurs. With the impending mobility shifts, this zone is ripe for disruption and we will be discussing what is possible when a variety of specialists and advocates work together to ensure an outcome the works for the public realm.

+ An Evolutionary Mobility-oriented Community: A Case Study from Tacoma

Tacoma Housing Authority's planning team re-envisions James Center North as a new mixed-use, mixed-income Mobility-Oriented Development. This collaborative charrette will examine how careful consideration for the changing needs of transit access, walkability/bikeability, vehicle electrification, shared mobility modes and goods delivery can inform the design of a real project and help transform a low-density auto-oriented commercial plaza into a vibrant mixed-use urban destination.

+ The Impact of MaaS, Autonomous Driving and Carsharing on the Urban Environment: a European Perspective

In this session TNO, Delft University of Technology, PTV and Dell will present their latest research on the impact of MaaS, autonomous driving (level 3/4 and 5) and car sharing on the urban environment. This session will address take-off of new mobility concepts in Europe and gives a broad overview of research, pilots and lessons learned on how the impacts on cities from a European perspective.